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The speaker’s decision to abstain from a casting vote on a matter of standards in public life could lead to the stalling of any future votes and effectively grants immunity to MPs, according to legal experts. On Wednesday, Speaker Anġlu Farrugia, as the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, was given a casting vote after the other members reached deadlock on whether to adopt a report by the Standards Commissioner on Minister Carmelo Abela’s use of public funds. Following a complaint by civil society NGO Repubblika, commissioner George Hyzler had investigated whether print adverts of Abela published last year constituted a misuse of taxpayer money. ....
Appeal against acquittal of Castille security guards should be null, court told The Attorney General filed an appeal against an earlier judgement that had aquitted three Castille heavies of detaining journalists against their will 13 April 2021, 1:07pm by Matthew Agius The lawyers defending three men alleged to have held members of the press against their will after a tense late-night press conference at Castille in 2019, have argued that an appeal against their acquittal is null and void. Journalists Monique Agius, Miguela Xuereb, Julian Bonnici and Paul Caruana Galizia had been covering an impromptu press conference during the extraordinary and turbulent events at the end of disgraced premier Joseph Muscat’s tenure on 29 November 2019 when, for several minutes, the media were not allowed to leave Castille by what appeared to be a group of plainclothes security guards. ....
When 11 people face court in Valletta, Malta, in coming weeks, the rule of law on the Mediterranean island will also be on trial. The defendants, who are facing charges relating to allegations of corrupt dealings, include Keith Schembri, the former chief of staff to the ex-prime minister, Joseph Muscat. Schembri was arrested and detained on March 20 on charges of corruption, money-laundering and “engaging in lucrative underhand business dealings”, according to press reports. His fellow defendants include various prominent business figures. The prosecutions stem from investigations, prompted by the publication in 2016 of the Panama Papers, into widespread corruption and money laundering in Malta. The investigations were central to the work of murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was looking into alleged links between government figures and off-shore shell companies at the time of her assassination in October 2017. ....
The supremacy of our Constitution is the keystone upon which the entire Constitutional structure rests. Our courts are empowered to strike down laws which are found to be inconsistent with the Constitution and in particular those laws which breach the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual set forth in our Constitution. The European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of Malta have in a number of cases ruled that the infliction of an administrative penalty in a case where it retained its criminal character could only be imposed by an independent and impartial court. Our courts have also made it amply clear that at all stages of proceedings considered to be criminal, applicants had a right of access to a court, namely one presided over by a magistrate or a judge. ....
There is no judicial review for decisions refusing citizenship applications The granting of citizenship is the Minister’s discretion and therefore, cannot be subject to the Court’s judicial review 14 March 2021, 8:59am by Malcolm Mifsud The granting of citizenship is the Minister’s discretion and therefore, cannot be subject to the Court’s judicial review. This was held by the First Hall of the Civil Court, presided by Mr Justice Robert Mangion in Ena Shoby Zaky Ibrahim Attia -v- Direttur tac-Cittadinanza, Ministru ghall-Gustizzja, Kultura u Gvern Lokali. The Plaintiff filed a sworn application asking the court to overturn a decision of the Director of the Citizenship which did not accept her application to become a Maltese citizen. There was no reason given to the decision taken in March 2017. ....